Grievances
by Fudgyokra
Summary: "Now Rigby was a bitter mess with a purple ring around his throat, and Mordecai was knocking elbows with Mitch and puking his guts into a plastic trash can every ten minutes." Mordecai makes a mistake that could threaten his friendship with Rigby. Human AU.


**Grievances**

**A/N: **This was just a quick little thing I wrote at 2:30 a.m., so it's short and fast-paced, but I enjoyed doing something darkly dramatic without it being action-oriented. This oneshot was a breather for me! Slight Morby, human AU. Mentions of violence, drugs, and alcohol ahead.

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At the very least, if nothing went right, he had a handful of snuff and a stolen six-pack of his boss's cheap beer. This wasn't really like him, but neither was choking his best friend over a dumb comment about Margaret. Or was it like him? He wasn't quite sure. Now Rigby was a bitter mess with a purple ring around his throat, and Mordecai was knocking elbows with Mitch and puking his guts into a plastic trash can every ten minutes.

None of this seemed to bother Benson, but Skips wouldn't shut up about it. "Mordecai," he warned, "you need to apologize to Rigby."

"Sure, Skips. After what he said?" He was only stalling for the sake of hearing his own voice, thinking that maybe he could kick his disassociation streak and fix things before Rigby really did leave him behind forever. Mordecai wasn't sure he'd ever actually go through with it, but even a dirtbag like himself knew that friendships shouldn't be built on a foundation of threats and injuries.

He felt like trash most of the time these days, anyway. If anything, he was glad that Rigby had found someone better to hang around, even if it was Margaret's best friend.

With a sigh and a vague hand motion, Mordecai mumbled something to Skips about leaving the issue alone, to which Skips responded with a judgmental shake of the head. The Asian man didn't have to say anything for Mordecai to feel pathetic. As it stood, he did a fine job of that on his own.

"I know I screwed up."

"You didn't do shit, bro," Mitch said from somewhere inside the trailer. Mordecai shook his head and fumbled in his attempt to grasp the doorframe. He was agonizingly drunk, and the moon seemed brighter than usual. Was it a full moon? It must have been, he reasoned. "Rigs got what was comin' to him."

"You keep on saying that, Muscle Man," Skips said, leveling a dead stare at Mordecai all the while. "One day he'll get sick of being your punching bag."

The younger groundskeeper chewed on his lip thoughtfully, but before his alcohol-drowned brain could decide on a response, Mitch materialized in the doorway and patted his companion on the back. "He'll be fine, Skips. He might be dumb, but he's not an idiot." At that, he laughed, a piercing shriek of a laugh that indicated to Skips that he too was plastered.

"What if he does leave, huh?" Skips's eyes traveled between the two of them challengingly. "What would you have to say for yourselves?"

Mitch grunted and flapped his hand in a gesture reminiscent of Mordecai's earlier one, then tried to take a step back into the trailer, only to stumble and knock the arm that Mordecai had been using to steady himself in the threshold. He broke through the whitish haze of marijuana smoke and hit the concrete steps on his way down, prompting Skips to hoist him up in a panic.

"Mordecai! Are you okay?"

Mitch stumbled back inside to find bandages, pausing to set his bottle down beforehand.

Mordecai groaned and held his head. He was fine, but he certainly felt the harassing sting of a cut just above his left eyebrow. His ribs were probably bruised, too, but he wasn't one to complain about bruises in this situation, after what he'd done. It wasn't like him, he swore again and again to himself—or rather, he thought it'd been to himself, until he suddenly became aware that his lips were moving, and that Skips was looking at him with tentative pity in his eyes.

"Whatever, man," he mumbled, trying, in vain, to shove the larger man away. "Let go, Skips. I'm fine."

"You won't be fine if you don't bandage that up."

"I don't need to be fine. I'm okay right where I am. Right now." He groped around on the end table beside the door for another bottle of beer.

Skips couldn't bring himself to stay any longer, so with as serious a warning as he could muster, he finally let the two troublemakers be. They spent the remainder of the night with a pipe and a radio that played with quality as abysmal as Mordecai's mood.

By the time he stumbled back to his room, the first gray light of dawn was filtering through the window. He groggily glanced from his empty bed with its cold, crumpled covers to Rigby's mattress on the floor, where the brunette was curled up, facing the wall.

Mordecai yawned, tugged his shirt over his head, and tossed it on the closet floor before slinking onto the mattress beside Rigby. He relaxed listening to the other's soft breathing, and he drunkenly mumbled against the back of his neck, "I'm sorry. God, I'm dumb. I'm sorry." His words were slurred and filled with uninhibited affection, but Rigby slept like a brick, still. Mordecai draped an arm over his friend's side. "I'm a shitty friend. I was in a bad mood and I totally…I just…I was in…" He paused and sighed through his nose. "I flipped out." He was crying, for some reason, but his brain didn't allow him to care at the moment.

He continued mumbling different slurred variations of an apology coupled with guilty self-depreciation as he drew his cold legs up closer to Rigby's. It took some time, but eventually his eyes grew heavy and his breathing slowed, and he concluded with, "I love you. You're, like…you're so good. I love you too much. I mean it."

Mordecai craned his neck to look up at the alarm clock on the nightstand. 5:07 a.m. Beside the clock was a glass of water, still furnished with ice cubes and dripping on the sides. He squinted at the glass with a weird feeling in his gut. Sleep took over before he could think too hard about it.

He was already out cold when Rigby wiggled onto his other side and surveyed his face. His breath was stale with smoke, his eyes were painted with days of worry, but his mouth was slightly ajar and antithetically relaxed, as though separate from the rest of him. Rigby could've kissed him right there, if he'd felt so inclined. For now, though, he decided against it.

His issue of forgiveness floated on the tired ends of a whisper. There was no doubt Mordecai's apology would start afresh when he woke up, but if it got their relationship back on track, then Rigby would accept it a million times.


End file.
